A free “Chatbot” service called “DoNotPay” has successfully appealed 160,000 parking tickets in London and New York.
The website of its creator, Joshua Browder, a 19-year-old London-born second-year Stanford University student, bills the product as the “World’s First Robot Lawyer“.
Browder has expanded his Chatbot to cover flight delays and to help those with HIV understand their rights.
Please consider Chatbot Lawyer Overturns 160,000 Parking Tickets in London and New York.
An artificial-intelligence lawyer chatbot has successfully contested 160,000 parking tickets across London and New York for free, showing that chatbots can actually be useful.
The program first works out whether an appeal is possible through a series of simple questions, such as were there clearly visible parking signs, and then guides users through the appeals process.
The results speak for themselves. In the 21 months since the free service was launched in London and now New York, Browder says DoNotPay has taken on 250,000 cases and won 160,000, giving it a success rate of 64% appealing over $4m of parking tickets.
VentureBeat has still more details in its version of the same story: The DoNotPay bot has beaten 160,000 traffic tickets — and counting
A bot made to challenge traffic tickets has been used more than 9,000 times by New Yorkers, according to DoNotPay maker Joshua Browder.
The bot was made available to New Yorkers in March. In recent years and decades, residents of The Big Apple have seen a persistent increase in traffic fines. A record $1.9 billion in traffic fines was issued by the City of New York in 2015.
Since the first version of the bot was released in London last fall, 160,000 of 250,000 tickets have been successfully challenged with DoNotPay, Browder said.
“I think the people getting parking tickets are the most vulnerable in society,” said Browder. “These people aren’t looking to break the law. I think they’re being exploited as a revenue source by the local government.”
Browder, who’s 19, hopes to extend DoNotPay to Seattle this fall.
Since the creation of DoNotPay, Browder has begun work on a bot to help people with HIV understand their legal rights and one to collect compensation for people whose flights were delayed beyond four hours.
He’s also creating a bot that helps refugees apply for asylum, as part of the Highland Capital summer startup accelerator program. It will utilize IBM Watson to translate from Arabic to English.
The robot lawyer guides people with an easy set of questions. Here are some examples.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
